How quirky is too quirky, anyhow? Finally seeing the light of day after a much-buzzed screening at last year’s Sundance, Wristcutters: A Love Story hangs on to the edge of enjoyably oddball without falling into molar-decaying twee.

Working from a novella by cult writer Etgar Keret, director Goran Dukic posits a universe where all of the world’s suicides are condemned to work dead-end jobs in a grayscale, noticeably SoCal-ish region of limbo. When a recent addition (Patrick Fugit) ventures into uncharted territories in search of an old girlfriend, he runs into a slew of eccentrics, including an emo hitchhiker (Shannyn Sossamon), who insists that she’s there due to a clerical foul-up.

It’s much less arch than it sounds, thankfully, with an ingenious use of found locations and a winning sense of its own absurdities. Fugit and Sossamon are, admittedly, a shade pale as the leads, but they’re more than compensated for by a superb supporting cast including Miranda July fave John Hawkes, Will Arnett, and Tom Waits at his most beatifically craggled. The rate of invention does sputter a tad during the last act (right around the time when someone discovers a literal black hole under a car seat), but when it’s cooking, Dukic’s sharply muzzy debut favorably recalls the all-too-brief post-Repo Man era, when the possibilities of indie film seemed head-bustingly limitless. Oh, and the ending? Dead solid perfection.

WRISTCUTTERS: A LOVE STORY DIR. GORAN DUKIC | RATED R | AT SELECT THEATERS IN LA AND OC

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